Because of an ongoing issue with Scribd view, I offer this again. I will be updating all Scribd viewed pieces of my work.
This poem was published in the literary journal Off the Coast, Winter 2011. Editors Michael Brown & Valerie Lawson. My poem was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. This poem is about my mother.
The Heat of a Mother’s Dance
Two teen sisters gab on a rural porch, dividing the worlds’
Offerings between them, as a younger brother stood behind with
Wooden matches.
Strike. Burn. Tossed fire in a lush green valley in the 1930’s
Where
The air was moist but not moist enough to quench the thirst
Of girls in a rush
To cleave mother’s apron strings. Somewhere else they
Lamented,
Not here amid bushes of ripe raspberries speckled with ticks
Waiting
To draw their sweeter, pulsing pulp of life.
One sister brushed away a glow in her hair, kissed the burn
To her hand.
Strike. Burn. Toss him off the porch. Stop it, sisters’ sang in
Harmony as
Flames needled a new hem of her light-as-air summer dress
Of cotton kindling,
As she slapped the bite of heat. She, now a sunrise on earth,
Rose,
As siblings fanned her behind like a naughty girl, urging on a
Crazy dance inside her dress,
Until she became a glowing gypsy flailing in flight, as oxygen-
Ribbons of flame fired
And fed her frenzied twirls and whirls, until her ankles
Crossed and she tumbled
To beg on knees; her hands pounding a fervent chest for
Alms as
The screen door slammed above her wounded howls in a
Woods
As wings of a dewed bird, mother’s wet apron, descended
To swaddle a daughter once more; to cool her, to coo-coo her
Until she no longer need dream of moving away, but she did
Dream,
And one day she left the ticks behind in their tangled bushes
And walked toward future embraces where
Her children looked upon her with each stuffing of her bra
After her warm baths and sweet smelling talcs. She did not
Fear
Letting them touch her breast, transformed into flattened,
Gnarly, melted tangles
Of Skin decorated with lattice swirls and bumpy browns,
Crossed and woven
By thick paths of meandering pinks nestled in withered
Weeds of white, where
Her little brown nipple centered itself in the inferno’s
Landscape: a dry acorn
On parched earth, forever waiting for the fertile nourishment
Of milky soil.
This poem was published in the literary journal Off the Coast, Winter 2011. Editors Michael Brown & Valerie Lawson. My poem was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. This poem is about my mother.
The Heat of a Mother’s Dance
Two teen sisters gab on a rural porch, dividing the worlds’
Offerings between them, as a younger brother stood behind with
Wooden matches.
Strike. Burn. Tossed fire in a lush green valley in the 1930’s
Where
The air was moist but not moist enough to quench the thirst
Of girls in a rush
To cleave mother’s apron strings. Somewhere else they
Lamented,
Not here amid bushes of ripe raspberries speckled with ticks
Waiting
To draw their sweeter, pulsing pulp of life.
One sister brushed away a glow in her hair, kissed the burn
To her hand.
Strike. Burn. Toss him off the porch. Stop it, sisters’ sang in
Harmony as
Flames needled a new hem of her light-as-air summer dress
Of cotton kindling,
As she slapped the bite of heat. She, now a sunrise on earth,
Rose,
As siblings fanned her behind like a naughty girl, urging on a
Crazy dance inside her dress,
Until she became a glowing gypsy flailing in flight, as oxygen-
Ribbons of flame fired
And fed her frenzied twirls and whirls, until her ankles
Crossed and she tumbled
To beg on knees; her hands pounding a fervent chest for
Alms as
The screen door slammed above her wounded howls in a
Woods
As wings of a dewed bird, mother’s wet apron, descended
To swaddle a daughter once more; to cool her, to coo-coo her
Until she no longer need dream of moving away, but she did
Dream,
And one day she left the ticks behind in their tangled bushes
And walked toward future embraces where
Her children looked upon her with each stuffing of her bra
After her warm baths and sweet smelling talcs. She did not
Fear
Letting them touch her breast, transformed into flattened,
Gnarly, melted tangles
Of Skin decorated with lattice swirls and bumpy browns,
Crossed and woven
By thick paths of meandering pinks nestled in withered
Weeds of white, where
Her little brown nipple centered itself in the inferno’s
Landscape: a dry acorn
On parched earth, forever waiting for the fertile nourishment
Of milky soil.
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